Collaborative, Crowd-sourced and Interactive Documentary

Abstract

Campus Reboot is a crowd-sourced, interactive and collaborative web-based documentary project and course. The project is a living document of the historical times of college during a pandemic and aftermath. This project was created during COVID-19 to give college students a way to express their feelings and create interactive video projects. Campus Reboot began as experimental research and a need to find ways for students to be creative during a pandemic. Practice-based research is an original investigation undertaken to gain new knowledge based on the practice and outcomes of that practice. There were three areas of involvement that were analyzed: the perspective of the students, the perspective of other instructors, and the perspective of those of us putting it all together. Working with fifteen colleges around the world, students created videos, based on prompts, to share their feelings about college during COVID-19. Campus Reboot allowed students to not only create works that speak to the voice of their generation, in the midst of a historical pandemic but also to work with the footage from other schools to create a broader story of our times. This project and paper look at collaborative, crowd-sourced, and interactive documentary as tools for new narratives, social engagement, and a combined voice of a generation during a global crisis. This type of collaboration can be re-worked to fit different types of projects. With minimal cost and the use of multi-media, college students can collaborate internationally to tell stories of their generation.